Observations on the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire
by Synthesis
Summary: From the desk of a Space Forces naval officer, a military report hoping to cover the breadth of the vast military and civil society of the Ctarl-Ctarl, dealing with everything from their pre-history to the infamous "Stripper Myth". If you like this but prefer something more like a narrative, check out 'A Terran in the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire' concerning the same officer.
1. Background & Introduction

**Observations on the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire and its peoples**

_By Vice-Admiral Alan Chandrasekhar  
Military Liaison,1__st__ Class  
9__th__ Expeditionary Fleet, United Space Forces _

**Background**

For eight years, I have acted as the Space Forces 9th Fleet's liaison to the 181st Royal Guards Combined Task Force, posted principally along a section of eight star-systems in the Cryos Nebula, a portion of what is known locally—roughly translated—as the **Inner Periphery** of the **Sacred Realm of the Hashiyo-Hashiyo Nation **(_Ninyo Koroyo Narl Hashiyo-Hashiyo_), known more commonly as the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire. Almost seven years ago, I was asked by the Navy Chiefs of Staff to compose a revised section on the Empire to replace the outdated Navy Manual dating back to more than thirty years ago. Seven years later, on the eve of my retirement, I believed I've composed a manual sufficiently accurate and up-to-date for the needs of the Navy.

_To avoid confusion, I have primarily used the official Space Forces designation for all terminology applying to our own government and society. Likewise, I have included the terminology used by the Ctarl-Ctarl People, as dictated in the 445__th__ Revision of the Ctarl-Ctarl Language, released by their government two years ago, where possible. The term 'Ctarl-Ctarl' is used in the case of nouns, or adjectives that relate to their society, reflecting the common use of double-phonetics in their language, while the Terran use of 'Ctarl' as an adjective is applied to certain scientific terms in which it has been agreed upon by both parties. __Similarly, I will be using the popular term 'Terran' for Homo sapiens sapiens, as it's predominantly used not just by the Ctarl-Ctarl, but by the other space-faring species in the galaxy. _

**Introduction **

In comparison to **Terra**, the approximately nine-hundred and eighty occupied star systems of the Empire reside slightly past the **Inner Orion Belt**, ranging 7.61±0.32 to 7.21±0.32 kpc from the Galactic Center. In this context, the outer border of the Empire could be defined as being well within a parsec of the **Tempa Stellar Region**, home of the well-known neutral trade outpost, **Blue Moon**, and the dual star systems of **Heifong III **and **Heifong IV**, and the Black Hole **Sagitarrius A* **near the Galactic Center, which the Empire claimed in the aftermath of the Third Succession Wars against the Pirate Guilds. Approximately eighty percent of Imperial star systems, and more than ninety-nine percent of its citizenry, reside within this triangle.

The Sacred Realm, as the Empire is known locally, is divided into the Inner and Outer Peripheries. The **Outer Periphery** extends approximately seven-hundred parsecs from the border of the Empire inwards, and is divided in thirty-three Border Districts with eighty-nine star systems. These star systems, acquired more recently by means military force, exist in a state of semi-martial law and are lightly populated: of thousands, only one system has a population of over five-million residents: **New Avalon**, which retains its pre-Ctarl-Ctarl name, with a population of 6.8 million. While they only make up approximately six-percent of the Empire's population, these worlds do feature a disproportionately high percentage of the Empire's non-Ctarl-Ctarl population, between thirty and thirty-two percent. It is estimated more than ninety million **Terrans **reside in the Outer Periphery. Most of the worlds of the Outer Periphery are between the third and forth levels of terraforming. Terrans, along with other non-Ctarl-Carl peoples, mostly trace their own lineage to the mass exoduses in the early days of **Sub-Ether Warfare**.

The **Inner Periphery** extends into the center of the Empire, and includes the remaining nine-hundred occupied star systems, and represents the urbanized, technologically-advanced center of the Empire. A majority of the worlds, historically, were colonized by the Ctarl-Ctarl themselves shortly after their development of Faster-Than-Light (FTL) travel, seven-hundred years ago, and their further acquirement of Sub-Ether Technology. In the approximate center, within the **Nochi-Nochi Star Cluster**, is the Ctarl-Ctarl Homeworld, part of a seven-star cluster, and eighth planet in a local system.

_(Figure 1: the Nochi-Nochi Star Cluster. The Homeworld System is third from the left.)_

Traditionally, the homeworld of the Ctarl-Ctarl is referred to only as **The Homeworld**, or sometimes **Home **(_Hokiyo_). Politically, the world's name is changed with each Ctarl-Ctarl Dynasty, as is the name of the Empire itself, and Home's current official name is **Hashiyo-Hashiyo Prime**. Even within the Empire, and especially by the current Dynasty's detractors, the name is rarely used. Among Terrans, the name Ctarl-Ctarl or **Ctarl-Ctarl Prime **is also used, somewhat inaccurately.

Home is believed to be the evolutionary origin as the Ctarl-Ctarl as a species—traditionally, the first Ctarl-Ctarl are credited with the construction of the the famed **Aruba Reba Ruins** on Home three millennia ago, though it is also thought to be well beyond their capabilities. The very earliest surviving artifacts of the Ctarl-Ctarl civilization originate from the same time period, and seem to indicate their earliest activities as hunter-gatherers. This leads me to my next section, which I believe is fundamental to understanding the Empire.


	2. The Biology of Ctarl Ctarl

**The Biology of Ctarl-Ctarl**

By Terran standards, Home is harsh world, orbiting a blue-white B-type **bright giant** with an apparent magnitude of +2.85 at a distance of about nine-hundred million kilometers. Widely agreed to be a **super-Earth planet**, it has approximately a mass approximate thirteen times that of Earth, with a regular gravity 4.8 times that of Earth. It exists comfortable within the life-zone of its star, though may not have always—its one natural satellite is the product of a catastrophic terrestrial collision with a now-nonexistent planetoid, that likely changed Home's early orbit. Its atmosphere is approximately 40% oxygen, 1% carbon-dioxide, and 54% nitrogen, with other gases included argon, with water-vapor consistently at 2%. This makes Home habitable by Terrans, who make up approximately 2% of the population, but overall somewhat unpleasant and difficult, particularly in respects to gravity. However, the planet's high oxygen content and higher gravity do make it popular for endurance-trainers of any number of species—it is commonly understood that if you can comfortably live on Home, most other habituated worlds are easy to adapt to.

_(Figure 2: female and male Ctarl-Ctarl, as commonly depicted in academia)_

The Ctarl-Ctarl's mammalian evolution reflects this. Higher gravity and the atmosphere's high oxygen content have resulted in a humanoid race and species that are only slightly shorter in stature than Humans (the average Ctarl-Ctarl female is 160 centimeters tall, while the average male is approximately 170 centimeters tall), and comparable in weight (Ctarl-Ctarl are between ten to thirty percent heavier than similarly-sized humans due to their added muscle content and a calcium skeleton that features large quantities of carbon, but they can be lighter). In what remains a mystery, the Ctarl-Ctarl Genome is extremely similar to that of Terrans: both have 23 **chromosomes**, and within those, Ctarl DNA is more than 99% identical to Terrans. As is known, Terrans and Ctarl-Ctarl can, and have, produced fertile offspring—culturally, and by the current laws, these offspring are almost always regarded as Ctarl-Ctarl, in a matter comparable to miscegenation in ancient Terran Earth History between "colonizer" and "colonial" peoples, but reversed. They tend to have a majority of Ctarl-Ctarl, rather than human, features, though exceptions do exist. Because of this cultural understanding, and their general exclusion from Terran society, almost all Ctarl-Human offspring are assimilated back into the Ctarl-Ctarl population within a few generations as a matter of pragmatism. Due to the inherent similarity between Terrans and Ctarl-Ctarl, mixed offspring's birth and nursing patterns are essentially identical to those of so-called "pure blood" Ctarl-Ctarl, which I will elaborate on later.

_(Figure 3: the 300-year-old painting _Koro-Koro Konoyo Hokiyo, _literally 'The Young Women Coming Home', depicting two scantily-clad Terran-Ctarl women in the classical style.)_

Ctarl-Ctarl evolution has produced beings that, both superficially and genetically resemble Terrans. Superficially, notable features, like long ears, pronounced canines, and longer fingernails, distinguish them from Terrans. They do not possess tails—recently Ctarl-Ctarl fashion has made false tails as an article of clothing possible, but these are not an actual part of their anatomy. Biologically, Ctarl-Ctarl could be considered super-fit, super-strong Terrans. The average Ctarl-Ctarl of either gender has the approximate physical strength and endurance of five to eight Terran humans by basic measurements. In regards to military personnel, who make up approximately one out of every twelve Ctarl-Ctarl at any given time, their strength can be exponentially-higher, as in the case of athletes and other specialists.

Of course, not all Ctarl-Ctarl are physically equal, but due to their mandatory military culture and forced mass-mobilization, there is an impressive level of consistency. Overweight Ctarl-Ctarl exist, particularly among the elderly population, but are still in a minority; within the early and late adulthood population, which is subject to either military mobilization or waiting in the reserves to be called up in a time of war, it's practically unheard of. Even within their own culture, Ctarl-Ctarl are intellectually aware that their society is artificially maintained high levels of physical fitness—"You'll be fit like a Ctarl-Ctarl," a common expression, is not merely in regards to their comparative strength among other sentients, but their high level of consistency. Underweight and physically weaker Ctarl-Ctarl are most common in certain professions—mid-level commerce, education, and "intellectual pursuits" like authors, composers, musicians, etc.—are actually held in somewhat high-regard, as to be thin is stereotyped as being a member of the **intelligentsia**_**.** _To use a translated Ctarl-Ctarl proverb, "Eggheads are to be respected and loved, unlike the military, which is respected and feared." The fact that the intelligentsia effectively controls all literature in the country—and by extension, propaganda, and is directly controlled by the government—reinforces the fact. On the other hand, the **Beauty Myth** certainly exists, particularly in civilian society, and is outlined in its own sub-section.

In terms of phenotypes, there is nearly as much variation between members of the Ctarl-Ctarl race as there is in Terrans, giving them more diversity in appearance than the **Corbanites** the **Logans**, and presumably the **Sith**. The full-extent of **Silgrian** diversity of appearance is not completely understood or appreciated, so they cannot be included for comparison. Ctarl-Ctarl usually have complexions anywhere from a light tan to a dark brown, a somewhat smaller range than that of Terrans. **Albinism** has not been observed in their species—exceptionally pale Ctarl-Ctarl are still close in shade to the majority population. They have a wider range of natural eye colors than humans, ranging from violet to red and including blue, green, and brown, and have hair color that typically ranges from white to dark brown and black. Blond Ctarl-Ctarl have been known to exist, but this tends to be a rare natural color, and is usually the product of cosmetics, as with Terrans. In direct contrast to **domesticated cats** (_Felis catus_), with whom the Ctarl-Ctarl are sometimes pejoratively compared to, Ctarl-Ctarl seem to have an abundance of head hair and a distinctive lack of body hair, across both sexes. Direct observation shows that they have less body hair than Terrans, coinciding with lower rates of baldness among mature males. The reason for this is unknown: an uneducated guess suggests that, since the Ctarl-Ctarl epidermis is known as being substantially tougher and more elastic that of Terrans, body hair was not an evolutionary necessity in the same way (though head hair has the evolutionary advantage of attracting mates). Body hair is extremely uncommon in females and even underarm hair is considered unusually among males, who may at least have facial hair when they are substantially advanced in age, perhaps why beards are considered rather distinguished among the Ctarl-Ctarl.

Like all biped mammals, they give birth to live young, still referred as **litters** (_Konoko _or _Koyoko_), of three to five young. Historically, female Ctarl-Ctarl would have as many as six litters over the course of their lives, often resulting in as many as twenty offspring, but this has changed in the past centuries to only one or two liters. The period of pregnancy, from conception to birth, is almost the precise length of a Ctarl-Ctarl Year (1.1875 Terran Standard Years), considerably longer than that of Terrans. The actual physical changes experienced by a female are remarkably similar to those of Terrans, particularly in modern times, with similar levels of access to medical technology. Despite the terminology used here, Ctarl-Ctarl birth demonstrates further biological similarities with humans rather than domesticated cats, contrary to the popular stereotypes. Examples include mothers possessing "only" two breasts from which to nurse, which like Terran women they retain through adulthood, or fathers taking an active part in rearing litters.

This is of particular note since Ctarl-Ctarl women remain in reproductive age for much longer than Terrans—a Ctarl-Ctarl reaches sexual maturity at the age of fourteen Ctarl-Ctarl Years (approximately nineteen Terran Years, putting them a few years in the lead), and can remain so for more than thirty Ctarl-Ctarl Years. This reflects the longevity of the Ctarl-Ctarl, who upon completing puberty, dramatically slow in development and age until the age of forty or fifty years. Between the ages of fifteen and fifty, a Ctarl-Ctarl enters what they have dubbed 'Early Adulthood', then enters 'Later Adulthood'—the actual distribution of time varies from person to person. In Early Adulthood, the Ctarl-Ctarl's appearance will only change slightly from when they first entered puberty, though their bodies have fully matured. Later Adulthood results in greater physical change, but it is still very small in comparison to Terrans. The difference is even smaller in females than males. The Terran equivalent would be of a nineteen-year-old woman acquiring the appearance of a woman in her twenties over the course of two decades, than progressing towards her late thirties over another two decades. Ctarl-Ctarl in Late Adulthood or towards the end of Early Adulthood most closely resemble Terrans. This is particularly true for males, who by this age have lost more of their most 'feline' features than their female counterparts. Accordingly, the majority of male Ctarl-Ctarl on Terran Worlds belong to this age bracket, and form **migrant laborers** seeking employment or commercial opportunities.

Following the end of Later Adulthood, they begin to age in a more normal pattern, though the difference in physical appearance between the elderly and adults is smaller than Terrans. Ctarl-Ctarl regularly live into their nineties (more than 107 TSY), and cases of living past their centennial and into 110 or 120 are not uncommon, giving them a somewhat longer natural lifespan than Human. In extreme old age, causes of death and end-of-life health, as during pregnancy, closely resemble humans: heart failure is particularly common.

In their early FTL travel history, the ability to produce large numbers of surviving offspring (as many as twenty to a single s female), and low motherhood mortality rates, allowed for the Ctarl-Ctarl to produce a huge population capable of colonizing a considerable number of worlds. It has shaped cultural norms and practices: when a single Ctarl-Ctarl could have to between one and two-dozen progeny, the loss of female life in other ventures or concerns (war, exploration, disease) was probably not weighted as heavily as it was in ancient **Terran civilization**, where the loss a significant portion of the female population would typically mean a demographic catastrophe. To put it in more simplistic terms: on ancient Earth, a primitive society could expect to ultimately sustain itself with just a few males, so long as an adequate number of females existed. Among pre-modern Ctarl-Ctarl, who had a limited understanding of social sciences, almost the reverse existed: just a few females could, in a generation, create enough young of both sexes to sustain a community, but cultural concerns with what we would now term **genetic ****diversity **(_Dawo-Dawo Mendo)_ meant that a severe lack of adult males could leave a community unsustainable from a social standpoint. It could be theorized that, on a very basic level, the Empire fears the sort of **demographic disasters **that were not uncommon in Earth history: take, for example, **Generalplan Ost**, the attempted genocide of the **Slavic Peoples** by the** German Empire** on the **Union of Soviet Socialist Republics **in the **late Industrial Age**. The death of between twenty and thirty million residents of the later nation in a very short period of three years, with victims being overwhelmingly male, led to a gender imbalance that pervaded the country for generations. It's not an exaggeration to say that, of all ancient Terran history, this is probably the single event the Ctarl-Ctarl education system is most familiar with, and the Empire most fears, despite a willingness or even fondness of waging warfare. **  
**

The ramifications of his development are likely both huge and ingrained into the Empire in incredibly pervasive ways: consider the willingness the subject both males and females to harm in military service, for example. This, in combination with the Ctarl-Ctarl's natural endurance and resistance to disease, produced many Ctarl-Ctarl with an aptitude towards exploration, expansion, and military conquests.


	3. The Beauty Myth

**The Beauty Myth and other observations on gender**

The _Maiko-Maiko Geiti_ (literally the "Idea of Beauty", from the ancient word for an actress or performer) exists in **Ctarl-Ctarl culture**—and in civilian society, actually resembles that of **Terran culture** in many respects. This is shocking, and worthy of its own small subsection, when you consider that the Ctarl-Ctarl historically had both patriarchal and matriarchal societies, and the current Empire, both legally and culturally, prioritizes practically every aspect of a citizen—their family background, their social standing, their value to the armed forces and to society as a whole, their estimated intelligence—before sex and gender. Gender distinctions exist by all means, as do **transgendered communities**, particularly on the cosmopolitan **core worlds** (though they are fairly exclusive even among the Ctarl-Ctarl and impenetrable to other species), but the **Ctarl-Ctarl legal code** stratifies society in so many other ways that gender is often left by the wayside. The current **Empress**, head of state for the whole of the Empire, is a woman. The current head of government, the **Imperial Prime Minister**, is a man, but recently succeeded a woman. The top military commanders, the clique of the highest ranking officers, are fairly evenly balanced between men and women, but only the current **Army **leadership is dominated by men—women form the majority in the other branches. There are more women in the entirety of the military, but only because mass mobilization does not discriminate between gender (and recent and expecting father and mothers are both exempt), and between 51 and 52 percent of the population is female.

Accordingly, it's surprising to Terrans that Ctarl-Ctarl concepts of beauty would be so similar in a society where gender roles are so different. In civilian life, gender roles do resemble **Terran society**—while the majority of both parents are employed, especially in the core worlds, dedicated homemakers are more common among women than men (in no small part due to the obvious child-rearing functions associated with motherhood). Unlike many aspects of society, the concept of beauty is defined by civilian, rather than military, life. Handsome men and women are assumed to have an advantage and society, not unreasonably. Tall, somewhat muscular males with more "feline" features—a sign of youth—are considered handsome and sexually desirable. Similarly, tall, physical fit women with more pronounced secondary sexual characteristics—most obviously, breasts, buttocks, hips, etc.—are considered more beautiful. Long, straight hair is prized by both genders, but more so for women.

Given the obvious similarities with Terran concepts of beauty, I don't consider it necessary to elaborate much further, except in one regard: the so-called "Stripper Myth"—that young adult Ctarl-Ctarl women, shortly after puberty, will occasionally flee the Empire, with a smaller number of men, by themselves, to avoid mobilization into the armed forces. The popular legend is that the women, in particular those with physical traits considered attractive in Terran society, will flee to the comparatively lawless and secluded parts of independent space, like **Sentinel III **or **The Reach**, to become "exotic" dancers, waitresses, courtesans or other less flattering physical professions, has some basis in reality, though it's hardly that common an occurrence. As is the case in Terran space, within the Empire, such **expatriates** are looked upon extremely **negatively** to the point where it hardly matters what their profession should be: a Ctarl-Ctarlexpatriate who now enjoys great wealth as a successful entertainer is looked up more lowly then those in the bottom run of society, the **proletariat **or the **working poor**. A few exceptions do exist; the most successful expatriate actresses or fashion models (as they are all practically women) are still held in some regard in the Empire for their fame and success, but are likely never to return for a number of reasons.


	4. Pre Empire and Ctarl Ctarl History

**Pre-Empire Ctarl-Ctarl History**

Prior to the First Dynasty (_Narl Oki-Oki_) of the **Tomoya-Tomoya Line**, Ctarl-Ctarl remained confined to their own planet, with virtually no efforts towards slower-than-light space travel. The early Hunter-Gather Societies evolved into individual chiefdoms, often engaged in conflict with each other over mineral resources, hunting territories, and with the development of agriculture, prized farmlands. Unlike other early pre-industrial societies, and the modern Ctarl-Ctarl today, family rivalries and blood feuds seem to have rarely been the cause of conflicts, and indeed, it is popularly held that family ties in society were weaker prior to the First Dynasty. The existence of chiefdoms led to the evolution of the City-State, which remained the standard of Ctarl-Ctarl civilization for almost twelve millennia.

The period which ended this era, known as the Warring-States Period (_Dashiyo Koto-Koto Nara_), lasted approximately six-hundred Standard Years, until one powerful City-State, ruled by the Tomoya-Tomyoa Line, overcame its rivals. The progeny of the Tomoya-Tomoya spent the next century slowly, and bloodily, unifying the Ctarl-Ctarl, through the use of all means of technology and industry-driven warfare: the most effective and infamous weapons, which survive to this day in museums or in ceremonial use by the military, include the rifled-musket, the self-loading machine gun, the automatic rifle, the treaded, cannon-armed battle tank, the ground-attack fixed-wing aircraft and the submersible attack vessel, and even the Ctarl-Ctarl's first nuclear-fission weapon (_Bokoni Hara-Hara_). Many of these closely weapons closely mirror military weapons used in pre- and post-Nuclear Age Terran society: In the massive Imperial Warfare Museum on Home, a restored nuclear-powered submarine, **I-151**, can be visited by foreign tourists and locals, and having your photograph taken with a self-propelled gun, a battle tank, or in the cockpit of an attack aircraft is practically a right of passage for the children of military families. These millennia-old weapons of war are a testament to the Ctarl-Ctarl ingenuity for industrial warfare and the efficiency of killing each other throughout their history, one that easily rivals Terran history. Six-hundred years on literally unending warfare forms the core basis of the Ctarl-Ctarl's extremely rich military tradition, arguably unrivaled in the galaxy, augmented by reoccurring, frequent warfare in the present.

Ultimately, the Tomoya-Tomoya were successful, through warfare, genocide, and intermarriage with the other most powerful families, and dominated the states on Homeworld. One notable exception are the **Kata-Kata Travelers**, whom the Tomoya-Tomoya forced into exile. The Kata-Kata continued to live on the fringes of society, abandoning the traditional Ctarl-Ctarl way of life and leadership for an egalitarian community, often compared to the old Terran philosophies of communism or socialism. With the introduction of FTL technology, but prior to Sub-Ether Development, the Kata-Kata migrated off-world, often against their will, settling on a small, otherwise uninhabited planet within the Nochi-Nochi Star Cluster, **Deitros Carinos**. They exist to this day, not officially considered citizens of the Empire and exercising self-rule in their principally agrarian, egalitarian society, as a rejection of most Ctarl-Ctarl social norms: they do not engage in warfare, elect their leaders democratically, have abandoned the traditional social classes, and consider themselves pacifists and engage in a largely nonviolent lifestyle. Among most Ctarl-Ctarl, the Kata-Kata are seen as political and intellectual pariahs, and Travelers who return to Ctarl-Ctarl Society, and do not immediately assimilate, are often discriminated against or subject to harassment from the government and non-government organizations, making political reconciliation a lofty but unlikely goal.

The overwhelming majority of Ctarl-Ctarl, however, were unified in the first empire, the **Holy Realm of the Tomoya-Tomoya Nation **(_Hoyia Koroyo Narl Tomoya-Tomoya)_. Many features of this Empire, including its government, military traditions, and social order survive to this day, and they will be elaborated on later. It also saw the rise of political and spiritual philosophers whose work survives in the present day, addressing everything from morality to jurisprudence to political economy and the nature of being.

The Tomoya-Tomoya Dynasty saw the government-ordered development of the first Ctarl spacecraft, an artificial satellite dubbed **Miyo-Miyo I**. A century later, the empire also saw the implementation of early FTL technology, as well as the development of the Sub-Ether Drive, allowing for population relief on what was considered at the time to be the overcrowded, overpopulated homeworld. In the following century, Home's population of over twelve billion dropped to just under eleven billion (with non-stop population growth) with STL space travel being widely used to colonized two dozen worlds. With the development of true FTL travel, the population dropped sharply to seven billion, with the Empire colonizing and terraforming more than two-hundred nearby worlds. With the development of Sub-Ether Drives, this trend continued to the present state. The Empire's current population, estimated at 163.2 billion, is spread between nine-hundred habituated worlds, with Home remaining the most populous world with four billion residents.


	5. Imperial and Modern History, 1 and 2

**Imperial and Modern History. Part 1**

The first Ctarl-Ctarl space traveler, less than a standard year after the launch of the first satellite, is a nearly-legendary figure, the young Captain-Lieutenant **Aisha Itoz Tachi-Tachi **of what was at the time the Imperial Air Force. Centuries before the first cosmonaut on Earth, **Yuri Gagarin**, she orbited Home three times before plummeting back to the ground with, by Ctarl-Ctarl standards, minimal injury. Like Gagarin, Tachi-Tachi instantly became a planetwide celebrity and a hero for all future generations, with a level of fame comparable to deities from Ctarl-Ctarl religion.

_(Figure 4: Aisha Tachi-Tachi on her planetwide tour. Among the other officers, she is the woman with long white hair in a thick braid, in a green uniform and ornate breastplate.)_

She bears worth mentioning, as Tachi-Tachi remains a heroic figure to this day. Her attractive visage adorns millions of schoolrooms on thousands of occupied worlds. She also represents the period immediately prior to what is concerned "modern" Ctarl-Ctarl history.

**Ctarl academia**, in cooperation with the Imperial State, have produced a magnitude of historical literature for their own people, over each dynasty. Based on the most current revisions, I will attempt to sum up the most crucial details of the last few centuries.

The first dynasty ended approximately eight hundred and thirty years ago, when the last Tomoya-Tomoya monarch abdicated at the point of a bayonet. Many of his siblings, aunts and uncles had been killed prior to this, the target of assassinations, warfare, and even simple accidents. In the century following the development of the Sub-Ether Drive, the untouchable Imperial family that had ruled all Ctarl-Ctarl for centuries was plunged into turmoil. Six emperors and empresses were killed by rivals, from either their court or in warfare. The abdication of the last Tomoya-Tomoya saw the creation of a new monarchy based on the current imperial prime minister and his own family, by direction of the highest officers in the imperial military. This second dynasty survived for just more than a century, before being replaced in a comparatively bloodless but literal palace coup orchestrated by the strongest members of the legislature. The next dynasty, the **Hashiyo-Hashiyo**, enjoyed greater success, and continues to exist to this day, beginning with Vice-Marshal and Parliamentarian **Lena Hashiyo-Hashiyo**, who used an alliance of both civilian and military leadership to overthrow the current dynasty and install herself as monarch.

**Empress Lena I**, as she became known, oversaw the creation of the current palace culture and rules of court that exist today, that her numerous descendants continued to rule through. In this most recent dynasty, the nature of Ctarl military and civil life have changed substantially, of course.

It was in this period the Ctarl-Ctarl finally refrained, almost entirely, from war among themselves and instead focused their considerable military energies on other species encountered towards the end of the previous dynasty—this is the origin of the impression of the Ctarl-Ctarl as an aggressive, warlike people, and the preeminent military power in the galaxy, though the first war between Ctarl-Ctarl and Terrans would not come for centuries. It's widely held, not inaccurately, that the most recent dynasty has done the species a great service by directing its "militaristic instincts" against other species, clearly members of other sovereign nations and federations, and away from itself—while it's debatable just how much the Ctarl-Ctarl have gained in their most recent wars, it's difficult to argue that they're not preferable to the centuries of internal bloodletting that has defined their history. The same example could certainly be applied to Terrans over several centuries as well. The transformation, however, was not an easy one, and took generations.

**Part 2, The Transformation from Global Politics to Intergalactic Superpower**

The end of the **Warring-States Period** did not come easily. In **Tomoya-Tomoya 76, **three local years before the launch of **Miyo-Miyo I**, the **First Kata-Kata Rebellion **challenged the Empire, leading to what could be termed an attempt at **genocide **against the Kata-Kata Peoples and the use of **nuclear weapons **both by and against the Empire. Ultimately, the Empire was forced to agree to a ceasefire—the Kata-Kata appeared to make good on their promise to fight to the last man and woman in their rejection of the **Imperial System**, and the inability to defeat such an obvious challenge to Imperial authority was beginning to undermine the political strength of the emperors and empresses at their own court.

_(Figure 5: A post-first dynasty painting celebrating the unwavering conviction of the Kata-Kata Rebellion, done in social realist style. Six Kata-Kata, identified by their red kerchiefs, can be seen manning an antiaircraft gun.)_

An unofficial peace lasted until **Tomoya-Tomoya 111**, when the **Second Kata-Kata Rebellion **upset the fragile Imperial System once more. A brutal **forced relocation **moved the Kata-Kata to Home's South Pole, where they would remain until their exile off world until **Tomoya-Tomoya 190**, when the Kata-Kata was compelled by the Empire to travel upon the first Ctarl-Ctarl FTL spacecraft. The **Imperial Traveler Expedition **relocated the surviving Kata-Kata communities aboard seventy-nine small colony ships, sent in the direction of the nearest habitable world thirty-two light years away, to the planet Deitros Carinos and its large moon of **Harvest**. Twenty Terran Years Later, the survivors completed their one-way trip.

The forced immigration of the Kata-Kata Travelers, while a success for the Empire, demonstrated the political weaknesses of the current leadership. The cost in life of the I.T.E. campaign, more punitive than explorative, made further FTL missions difficult to launch. This, combine with an escalating population crisis on Home, eroded their power base further. Within another local century, palace intrigue was joined by a resumption of outright warfare. **Aircraft carriers **deployed missile strikes on the Imperial Palace, while battle tanks drove over the gates surrounding the **Imperial Parliament**. Violence resumed on a level unheard of since the Warring-States Period ended, touching literally every Ctarl-Ctarl in the universe, with the possible exception of the Kata-Kata. In one particularly disastrous year, **Tomoya-Tomoya 228**, martial law was declared and the Imperial government arrested tens of millions of men and women in the largest mass detainment in the species' history. Untold millions were later arbitrarily executed, while further millions were slaughtered not by the government but by powerful local families and corporations desperately consolidating land and power. Ctarl-Ctarl corporations reintroduced **chattel slavery**, abolished by the first Tomya-Tomoya monarch, and literally enslaved continents of people. Supposedly safe from the total breakdown of the society in their walled country estates, during the **First Aruba Koro Rebellion,** perhaps as many as twenty of the richest Ctarl-Ctarl families outside the immediate royal family, members of the **business class** and **gentry**, were murdered by revolting slaves. In **Tomoya-Tomoya 233**, two-thirds of the richest Ctarl-Ctarl were executed for crimes against the species—a year later, when the **Imperial Business Association **of Parliament refused to emancipate the remaining slaves and called the revolutionary's bluff, their children were executed. In the words of **Vora Ulyan Ulyan**, one of the most celebrated and infamous slave revolutionaries, "A million children have already been killed; what do thirty more matter?"

_(Figure 6:Photograph of Vora Ulyan Ulyan, standing among other Aruban slaves. Vora can be identified by her distinctive white dreadlocks and red breastplate._)

Within two Ctarl-Ctarl years, most of the Imperial Family had been killed, and several competing factions were aiming nuclear missiles at each other. The last monarch of the First Dynasty, **Emperor Horonov IV**, against the wishes of his own supporters, abdicated rather than allow the destruction of society. His prime minister, the sixth appointment in half as many years, **Grand Admiral Otori Marcasi Notok-Notok**, became interim **Head of State **in addition to his normal office of **Head of Government **of the Empire. Now a private citizen, **Tobias Horonov Tomoya-Tomoya **became the oldest member of his family to die of natural means, seventy local years later.

_(Figure 7: A preserved media photograph of the formal transfer of power between the First and Second Dynasty. Grand Admiral Notok-Notok can be identified by his white military tunic, one the left, standing among the surviving Imperial cabinet._)


	6. Imperial and Modern History, 3 and 4

**Part 3, the Second Dynasty**

The **Great Cataclysm **that preceded the fall of the First Dynasty follows closely behind the Warring States Period as the most self-destructive period in Ctarl-Ctarl history, compressed into just a few decades rather than centuries. The grand admiral turned prime minister was crowned **Emperor Otori I**, at the age of fifty-one local years.

In **Notok-Notok 2**, the new, short-lived government put its two major contributions to history: the **Third Five-Year Plan** (_Sak Toro-Toro Goun_) and the single most important treaty in Ctarl-Ctarl history, the **Ctarl-Ctarl Koroyo Narl Konkodo**, roughly translating to the "Imperial Agreement on the Conduct of the Species."

This treaty acknowledged that the **Ctarl-Ctarl**, having spent centuries perfecting various methods to kill one another, would not easily drop this habit, and advocating the formation of a new political body, separate from **Parliament**, to moderate regional disputes. This led to the creation of what would become the second house of the Imperial legislature, the **Assembly of Empire **(_Kaiga Ninyo-Ninyo_), alongside the original body, the **Assembly of the People** (_Kaiga Ctarl-Ctarl)_. Both bodies exist to this day, and will elaborated further on the chapter concerning the Ctarl-Ctarl political system. The same edict also formally banned corporate chattel slavery once more, emancipating a remaining eleven million slaves concentrated primarily in the **Aruba **continent and elsewhere in the western hemisphere. Finally, it led to the swift arrest and trial of approximately one-hundred and twenty thousand political criminals, including thirty-two **war criminals**. While at the time those arrests were highly controversial, they are largely considered a minor point of interest in light of the period.

As far as history books are concerned, the Ctarl-Ctarl Koroyo Narl Konkodo remains one of Emperor Otori's two great accomplishments. The 3rd Five-Year Plan, while not immediately substantial, introduced a practice of government that would forever shape the Ctarl-Ctarl domestic policy and **political economy**. Before the 1st Five-Year Plan, proposed in the last days of the prior dynasty, it was not common practice for the Imperial government to intervene in economy outside of the armed forces and in the event of **natural disasters**. The **Five-Year Plans **represented a new approach to government, where in Imperial and regional authorities took specific initiatives in **health care **and **infrastructure development**, and further expanded the **education system**, which had always been the domain of the high government. Like many other features, it lived on after the dynasty ended.

The Notok-Notok Dynasty also so the rise of formalized **political parties**, contending over seats in both houses of parliament, which will be elaborated later on. Less civil disputes were resolved through resumption of warfare; however, the sheer brutality of the last dynasty could not be repeated, not through lack of trying. The local governments and remaining corporations faired as bad, or worse, than the central Imperial government, and had little fight with them—compared to the tens of millions dead at the fall of the last dynasty, the sporadic warfare under Otori I and his successors, **Empress Naomi IV **(his niece) and **Emperor Otori II **(her son), limited to deaths in the tens or hundreds of thousands, was both minimal and meaningless. The golden age of **Ctarl-Ctarl capitalism **is suggested to have ended when business interests and the great **tycoons **of the earlier age could not survive in the current one, replaced by various systems of **state capitalism **orbiting around a closely controlled **command economy**, which defines Ctarl-Ctarl economics to this day. Likewise, even in victory, impoverished provincial governments found themselves subservient to the Empire, as the only political organization with the capability to rebuild. Between **Notok-Notok 5 **and **Notok-Notok 15**, domestic civilian spending rose by around 1700 percent, while military spending rose by 400 percent, barely matching late-Tomoyo-Tomoyo levels.

This **Second Dynasty** _(Narl Noki-Noki_) also featured the second wave of Ctarl-Ctarl colonization, as the Empire flooded neighboring unoccupied worlds, as a method of contending with a an unprecedented post-war **baby boom **(_koro-koro bang_) that quadrupled birthrates. Practically every single unoccupied world immediately accessible to them. The rapid migration and expansion of Imperial space brought the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire to the borders of **Logan Space **as well as the fringes of the **Silgrian Commonwealth**. While Terrans were experiencing **the late Renaissance, **we now know the **Logans **had forged a number of closely aligned nations into a single cohesive empire, the largest in known space. The astronomical dangers of space travel in the **galactic core**, the military might stationed on the borders of Logan space, and the very unfavorable difficulty-to-benefit ratio of interventions into **Silgrian **space effectively checked Ctarl-Ctarl expansion until the next dynasty.

**Part 4, the Third and Current Dynasty**

_In Spring of One-Oh-Three, there was a palace coup  
Behind it were military women through-and-through,  
Who did not feel the need to be married in. _

_They had themselves a party at the point of a gun.  
They made it clear the Emperor was over and done,  
When the dust clear they showed they were here to win!_

(Translated verse from _Shoroyo Lena_, the only Ctarl-Ctarl musical successful enough to run for a year)

In **Notok-Notok 103**, while the young Emperor Otori II, youngest grandson of the dynasty's founder, was visiting his wife and their newborn _konoko_ from earlier that week, a clique of military officers leading **Imperial Guards battalions** stormed several key complexes and institutions in Homeworld's **Capital City**, seizing administrative power in a bloodless coup. The clique, and thousands of soldiers it commanded, was led by **Lena Hashiyo-Hashiyo**, the young daughter of the Marshal Hashiyo-Hashiyo, **Chief of the General Staff**, and herself a vice-marshal and a speaker in the Assembly of the Empire. In what is now called the **Long Night** (_Yongaga-Yongaga_), it took about six hours and twenty thousand casualties, including more than thirty deaths, to covertly seize the Imperial court, secure Parliament and the Defense Ministry, and confine the other noble families and the members of the **Imperial Household **and family still in the city. By the time the emperor returned, the entirety of **cabinet** that was not under arrest, and the body of top military officials had secretly thrown their lot in with the clique. Shortly before fleeing the planet with his family, Otori II abdicated and granted the powers of the Ctarl-Ctarl emperor to parliament.

To this day, the Long Night is surrounded in intrigue and legend. In actuality, the disproportionately-young clique consisted both of male and female officers, despite the images that has survived of them. They stormed the palace in armored vehicles with **police riot gear **and assault rifles, though there were at least a few known cases where the clique leaders literally tore apart their defenders with their hands. Their actual motivations are still debated: the clique explained themselves as acting in defense of the Empire in the face of a rising Logan threat. Others claimed that both houses of parliament, the **Imperial Supreme Court**, and police forces in the Capital City all opposed the young Emperor as either too conservative or insufficiently radical and dynamic: they hinted that they would not oppose an efficient military takeover, which itself would demand a new emperor or empress be crowned.

In either case, three weeks after the coup, the **Provisional Council for the Empire**, a legislative committee, dropped the largely ceremonial criminal case against the Vice-Marshal. Without the approval of Otori Mato Notok-Notok, who had already fled to the edges of Ctarl-Ctarl space, and increasing demonstrations in the streets across Homeworld demanding that someone, anyone—likely one of the troublesome military officers—be crowned Emperor already, both parliament and the Imperial Household (and by extension the remaining Imperial court) crowned the Vice-Marshal **Empress Lena I**, heralding the current **Hashiyo-Hashiyo Dynasty**.


	7. The Imperial Armed Forces, Part 1

**The Imperial Armed Forces, Part 1**

It's necessary, to some extent, to combine the narrative of the history of the Empire to the modern Ctarl-Ctarl military, which itself is of greatest interest to us in the Space Forces. As far as we're concerned, that military might is wholly a product of the current dynasty: with the Ctarl-Ctarl developing their first Sub-Ether Drive towards the end of the First Dynasty, the entire **Towards Stars **period, the whole of Terran FTL travel—the last two hundred years, the founding of **Einhorn Reich, Pyotr Empire, United Stellar Systems of America **and **Empire of the Great Tenpa**, the rise of the great **Guilds**, and the **Great Terran-Ctarl Ctarl War** all fall within the same Third Dynasty.

_(Figure 8: the coronation of the first Hashiyo-Hashiyo Empress, attended almost solely by uniformed military personnel.)_

This humbling realization is simply a reflection of Terra's later, though not latest, entrance into the game of spacefaring empires. The current military of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire has existed longer than humans have been outside **Earth Space**, and in the meantime, it has tripled the size of the Empire, largely at the expense of now defunct interstellar confederacies, particularly the Lorgans. It is the single greatest unifying force among hundreds of billions of Ctarl-Ctarl, even surpassing their own **biology **as a unique species.

The Ctarl-Ctarl Military, officially the **Imperial Armed Forces of the Hashiyo-Hashiyo Nation** (_Rikogo Ban-Ban Tei Narl Hashiyo-Hashiyo_), is probably of greatest interest to us in the Space Forces, and with good reason. Accordingly, this section covers two topics: the first dealing with history, military traditions and culture, and the second dealing with the actual structure and strength of the fighting forces. Given more time, I could elaborate endlessly, but I will attempt to sum up the most important aspects.

The Imperial Armed Forces are, as one might expect, held in high regard, with few exceptions. In the informally and formally stratified society of their people, the very large **officer corps** stands with the current Imperial Family at the apex of the pyramid and the "common" officers, enlisted Ctarl-Ctarl men and women, not far behind them. Socially, military personnel and their families are held in much higher regard than the most successful merchants and entrepreneurs—it is not an exaggeration to say that the average captain, 1st Class, in the **Imperial Navy** or a colonel in the **Imperial Army** enjoys higher social status than a successful captain of industry who might earn fifty times their annual income; quite the opposite of the overwhelming majority of Terran worlds, where military success pales in comparison with entrepreneurial success. This can be telling about Ctarl-Ctarl Society—as on Terran worlds, successful business-owner or a decorated military officer is overwhelming likely to be from a family that traditionally occupied that role, leading to predictable social stratification. The highest officers of the Imperial Armed Forces—men and women holding the rank of **Marshal of the Grand Army of the Hashiyo-Hashiyo Nation** and **Admiral of the Fleet of the Hashiyo-Hashiyo Nation**, who sit on the General Staff or hold posts in the Imperial Cabinet can expect to be treated with much the same respect and deference as entitled to members of the Imperial Family—and occasionally, the two groups overlap. On the other end of the scale, literally billions of young men and women will be rotated in and out of military service, often against their own wishes, but can be expect to be respected by both culture and the law during their time in uniform—respect for the military uniform crosses all ethnic, cultural, and age groups in the Empire, and extends to both officers and enlisted.

_(Figure 9: A photograph celebrating a decorated military family, the Clan-Clans, a distant branch of the Imperial Family. From left to right, you can see the father, youngest son, daughter, eldest son, and mother. Behind them, flanked by firearms and swords, is a portrait of the previous Emperor.)_

Outside of the approximately one-hundred member Imperial Family, which unsurprisingly enjoys unique privileges and procedure in life, the military experience across the officer corps is the same for the so-called **noble families**—families that have no actual rank of peerage, but do have traceable bloodlines to the current dynasty, and in all likelihood, the past two—to most common **proletariat**, **entrepreneurial**, and **agricultural** families that may range from two parents and their immediate children to literally hundreds of Ctarl-Ctarl with the same family name. The moral, emotional and psychological support more readily available from richer and more prestigious families aside, the process of graduating from the three-tier Ctarl-Ctarl **education system **is strictly regulated and standardized across the empire. The Ctarl-Ctarl are nearly as proud of their millennia-old **meritocracy **(_Chi yin-yin_) buoyed by their huge government bureaucracy as they are of their individual strength and military prowess as a species, and the officer corps reflects that fact: to graduate with **honors **from the all three tiers of public education is a prerequisite to attending the most grueling, demanding Ctarl-Ctarl **military academies**. In turn, graduating from the highest of those institutions with honors is a prerequisite to obtaining the highest, most prestigious appointments in the spacefaring Imperial Navy and may sit on the **Imperial** **Admiralty**; those who fail to graduate with honors are still guaranteed lofty commissions as commanders of destroyers, cruisers, and carriers, tied to military and political appointments.

(_Figure 10: HIMS _Orta Hone-Hone, _a typical cruiser of its class, of which the Empire operates at least 800 presently. While more than a kilometer long, it is outnumbered by literally tens of thousands of smaller destroyers and frigates. This particular vessel is under the command of the ambassador plenipotentiary in the Tenpa Stellar Region.)_

Thanks to the rapid expansion through warfare of the last few centuries, the prestige and fame of the navy had surpassed its counterparts in the army, in large part due to the necessity of the navy to transport the army. However, the same system exists in officer corps of the army; on the lower level, the localized terrestrial armies and navies, of which literally hundreds exists scattered among as many populated worlds, competition is far less fierce and recruiting is entirely local. Commissions are shorter, typically just a few years. As with the Imperial military, local military forces' enlisted personnel are overwhelmingly conscripts serving mandatory terms between 1 and 3 years: men and women who were not deferred for family, industrial, biological or religious reasons. Even a strategic world like New Avalon, with its high Terran population and militarized day-to-day life, has a **planetary defense force**—the combination of the local army, navy, and air forces—of only between 30,000 and 100,000 standing officers, soldiers, sailors and pilots.

_(Figure 11: Sailors of the New Avalon Fleet on a missile boat. Several Terrans can be seen in the background, though all military personnel are Ctarl-Ctarl. Of note are the very old-fashion uniforms worn by the sailors, with a sailor suit, badge-and-tally ribbon featuring peakless cap, and scarf.)_

By contrast, the Imperial Navy has almost a hundred major fleets, each with hundreds of thousands of active personnel. Planetary defense forces serve primarily as garrisons on unruly worlds alongside regular police services, deterrents to invasion, and in the event of invasion, a time-buying force to literally be "bled" until Imperial military can arrive. Their actual military effectiveness is largely unknown: during their war with the Terran Empires, the Ctarl-Ctarl never fought in their own space, and planetary defense forces were largely occupied replacing losses in the active divisions or serving in a **labor draft**. The daily life and culture of the planetary defense forces actually resembles that of our own Space Forces to some extent, at least when compared to the very different nature of the Imperial branches, in particular the Imperial Navy.

_(Figure 12: The junior officer bridge crew of the _Orta Hone-Hone _during annual wargames within Ban Guild space. Their unusual uniforms—formfitting pink bodysuits, white polymer shoulder guards, interface visors—are typical of the navy except in respects of the colors, which is unique to its ambassadorial role. As can be seen, women and men wear identical uniforms, with the exception of the polymer fittings worn by women over their breasts. This is presumably a sort of 'poor woman's breastplate'.)_

The Imperial Navy fosters a very strong, and very unique, **esprit de corps **(_Ching Hwan-Hwan Sung_). To the average Terran military observer, the bridge of an elite Ctarl-Ctarl cruiser, with its elaborate **flora**, extensive use of self-contained **bio-organic computers**—a contraction to the direct **mind-machine bio-interfaces **used by the best ships in the Space Forces—and its raucous, screaming junior officer crew might more closely resemble an insane, hyperactive summer camp filled with loud, impulsive young men and women. Having undergone basic training as adolescents that would probably kill recruits entering the **Space Forces Marine Corps**, or senior sergeants for that matter, and affected by more than a decade of extremely persistent **indoctrination **and **patriotic fervor, **sailors and officers are in turn allowed a ridiculous amount of personal freedom. Junior officers regular question and even threaten their superiors, bridge crews bursting into loud chanting bordering on screaming. Generally speaking, the mark of an exceptional senior officer is the ability to ignore such provocations, insults, and threats, but this is, after all, **exceptional.** Routine violence is discouraged as a matter of necessity—physical **hazing **by Ctarl-Ctarl kills, as simple as that—though vocal altercations are extremely common. Unlike the occasional problem in the Space Forces, psychological hazing is surprisingly rare, since it is extremely uncommon for Ctarl-Ctarl to approach one another from a psychological standpoint, subtle or otherwise, especially in the military.

_(Figure 13: The new commander, executive officer, and army liaison officer of the _Orta Hone-Hone. _Both the XO and ALO can be identified by their dark green military greatcoats over pink jumpsuits and red interface gear. The commanding officer, younger than both, stands in the middle in field dress, a white breastplate, green skirt, leggings and boots. All three wear the distinct shoulder guards restricted to high officers.)_

Since all Ctarl-Ctarl undergo the same training regimen in their barracks, there is no official counterpart to the Space Forces Marine Corps. In ship-to-ship actions, which were not at all uncommon in our war with the Ctarl-Ctarl, both sailors and army troops are led by the **army liaison officer** and occasionally the ship's commander. The psychology and morale of the Ctarl-Ctarl navy correctly horrifies the Space Forces and the armed forces of the Corbanites, Silgrians and other peoples, but given how well it has served the Empire in the last thousand years—battles lost by the Ctarl-Ctarl to every over species, including Terran, if added together and multiplied by ten would still be outnumbered the battles the Ctarl-Ctarl lost to themselves—it can hardly be questioned.

It should be noted that this system probably could not be replicated among Terrans for one reason in particular: throughout their entire lives, and regardless of their vocation, Ctarl-Ctarl are ingrained with an incredibly strong sense **respect for authority** that flushes out any sort of formalized **rebellious streak **they might otherwise have. This extremely resilient tendency to obey will be looked at more closely in future sections on culture more extensively, but bares mentioning here: even outside their own Empire, Ctarl-Ctarl are nearly as famous for their dogmatic, even religious need to obey authority figures, as they are for their jingoism, biological pride, and physical aggression. It is well known that Ctarl-Ctarl immigrants are, statistically, more law-abiding then the local Terran populations on planets they travel too, though this is actually common among other species as well. In Terran space, cases of crime involving Ctarl-Ctarl are not only extremely rare and exceptional, those that do exist are almost always characterized by fantastic violence that would probably qualify any human for a claim of insanity in court, and frequently lead to the Ctarl-Ctarl in question committing **ritualistic ****suicide**. This unusual mental training is unique to their species in such that it is not based along religious and familial lines, as it is among Terrans, but lifelong **psychological conditioning **that is so deeply ingrained into culture that it might as well not exist. Ctarl-Ctarl are simply taught to have unwavering faith in their social betters, even if they are not of the same species. This fanatical obedience has practical effects: their voracious appetites and unique health care needs, the tendency among some Ctarl-Ctarl to overreact or otherwise be socially awkward around Terrans, and the strict laws on many worlds forbidding it, have not deterred business owners from **headhunting** Ctarl-Ctarl employees where available. In military terms, it means that in the barracks, Ctarl-Ctarl must be taught to resist the urge to unquestionably obey: they must dramatically challenge their commanders, in whatever might be the interests of the Empire and her Imperial Majesty, whom every serviceman and servicewoman has sworn absolute loyalty to. In political terms, it offers a convenient explanation to the incredibly unique situation that exists with the Kata-Kata Travelers; besides that unique case, the Space Forces has no documented cases of Ctarl-Ctarl **pirate guilds**, **anti-government forces**, or even **outlaw companies**. By contrast, more Terrans serve outside the flag of the Space Forces (as pirates, **mercenaries**, or **outlaws**), then under it.


	8. The Imperial Armed Forces, Part 2

**The Imperial Armed Forces, Part 2**

Alongside an approximation of the Ctarl-Ctarl order of battle, here I finally attempt to address the major mission of my posting to the 181st Royal Guards Combined Task Force: the comparative military strength of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire versus the **Combined Space Forces of Terra**—that is, the unified military forces of Einhorn Reich, Pyotr Empire, USSA and Tenpa Empire.

The most basic unit of Imperial Navy is the **line of battle**, which consists of three or more, though usually under seven, ships. In the rather fluid organization of naval doctrine, lines are typically populated by ships depending on their intended roles: aggressive, defensive, pursuit, planetary invasion, blockade, skirmish, and so forth. For example, in the Imperial Navy, a **cruiser** represents a particular compromise between maneuverability and firepower that makes them popular in aggressive lines. Larger **battleships **and **carriers**, being slower and boasting more firepower, are popular in defensive lines. Smaller than cruisers, **destroyers **and **frigates **are common in pursuit lines. **Squadrons** consist of multiple lines, and a **task force** consists of multiple squadrons permanently organized together, usually geographically. A larger, rarer organization unit, the **fleet**, is similar to a task force but with two or three times as many squadrons, dependent on its mission type: fleets are rarely organized outside of wartime, with the notable exception of the **Royal Home Fleet**, a prestigious unit which permanently remains in orbit around Home during peacetime, even as ships are rotated in and out of it for different assignments.

The military ranks of the Imperial Armed Forces are fairly simplistic, and very conveniently translated to match their Space Forces counterparts. Since there are only two real "branches" of the armed forces, the army and navy, you can interpret these as land and deck ranks, accordingly:

**_(Imperial Naval Rank) (Imperial Army Rank)_**/ (Terran Navy Rank) (Terran Army Rank)

* * *

**(Nitto-Nitto Hei) (Nitto-Nitto Bing)**/ (Sailor) (Rifleman/Riflewoman)  
**(Itto-Itto Hei) (Itto-Itto Bing) **/ (Superior Sailor) (Corporal)  
**(Jotoh-Hei) (Xia-Bing) **/ (Senior Sailor) (Junior Sergeant)  
**(Gun-Hei) (Zhong-Bing) **/ (Petty Officer) (Sergeant)  
**(Cho-Hei) (Shang-Hei) **/ (Chief Petty Officer) (Master Sergeant)  
**(Jun-Hei) (Zhun-Hei) **/ (Midshipman/Midshipwoman) (Warrant Officer)

**(Jun-Jun) (Wei-Wei) **/ (Sub-Lieutenant) (Junior Lieutenant)  
**(Jun-Sho) (Wei-Shoa) **/ (Lieutenant) (Senior Lieutenant)  
**(Tai-Tai Jun) (Tai-Tai Bing) **/ (Captain-Lieutenant) (Captain)  
**(Tai-Bang) (Shosa Bing) **/ (Captain, Third Class) (Major)  
**(Tai-Sa) (Chu-Liguo) **/ (Captain, Second Class) (Lieutenant Colonel)  
**(Tai-Jo Hei) (Shang-Liguo) **/ (Captain, First Class) (Colonel)

**(Jo-Jo Hei) (Jiang Bing) **/ (Counter Admiral) (Major General)  
**(Jo-Sho) (Sa-Jiang) **/ (Vice-Admiral) (Lieutenant General)  
**(Jo-Chu) (Da-Jiang) **/ (Force Admiral) (Colonel General)  
**(Jo Kwoto-Kwoto) (Ming Guo Yuan-Yuan) **/ (Grand Admiral) (Vice-Marshal)  
**(Jo Kwoto Hashiyo Ctarl-Ctarl) (Ming Guo Zhong Hashiyo Ctarl-Ctarl) **/ (Admiral of the Fleet of the Hashiyo-Hashiyo Nation) (Marshal of the Grand Army of the Hashiyo Hashiyo Nation)

* * *

While some of those translated ranks are no longer in service, particularly in the Space Forces, this should be enough to give the reader a general idea of the rank structure, fairly similar to our own military forces.

_(Figure 14: Photograph of three top officers on the HIMS _Orta Hone-Hone_, posing at a naval review: a female captain-lieutenant, a male lieutenant, and a male senior lieutenant._)

If we were to combine the population of the four sovereign Terran interstellar entities that make up the extent of human colonization of deep space, we would account for more than ninety percent of Terrans in the known universe and would actually outnumber the population of Ctarl-Ctarl by perhaps as much as a third. Of course, the very nature of Terran political orders and the alliance forged between them, the distribution of political authority among the autonomous rulers and governments, means that the real extent of military mobilization among all of the Terran space is substantially lower than that of the Ctarl-Ctarl. A brilliant example of this is the fact that perhaps as many as one in five Terrans live in so-called **Guild space**: planets and moons outside spherical domains of the great nations who usually enjoy complete political autonomy but are economically involved in the **Great Guilds**. The border worlds of Sentinel, Heifong, and **Oracion **are counted among these. Most obviously, the Sol System sits just outside the borders of the USSA and Tenpa Empires as a matter of diplomacy. The Guilds themselves act as loosely-linked confederacies that do not contribute to the combined military efforts of the Space Forces in a military sense.

The borders of Ctarl-Ctarl space, particularly those adjacent to the **Ban**, **Acid-B, Krauss **and **Kei Guilds** are lined with so-called **fortress worlds**, worlds the Empire has occupied and industrialized for no other reason besides their strategic location on the Outer Periphery. While the worlds themselves are militarized, particularly those with high indigenous non-Ctarl-Ctarl populations, their point of interest are the massive taskforces anchored in orbit of habitable worlds, comprising tens of thousands of ships of varying classes and hundreds of army groups. In these times of peace, it's easy to forget those task forces, by themselves, very likely equal the whole of the Space Forces. Consider the remarkable success and proliferation of the three largest Terran guilds, whose influence, despite decades of trying, abruptly comes to an end before the borders of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire. With the exception of the fringes of USSA and Einhorn Empire space, every Terran lives in the shadow of one of the Great Guilds—unless they reside in Ctarl-Ctarl Empire. Without going into too much depth, guilds do not exist in the Empire: formally, the Empire controls a mandatory trade bloc, which in reality if not law exists is comprised of either three or four loosely defined common markets through Ctarl-Ctarl space.

If the union of the Space Forces is not an match for the Empire's might, as the last Terran-Ctarl War seemed to demonstrate, the private militaries and pirates are certainly no match, even if we acknowledge the rumors of the enormous might they do exert in the shadows. Even if we went as far as to assume that legendary **Kei Pirates **under the infamous **Pirate Lord Hazanko** are the greatest military force known to humanity, even more than the Space Forces, there is no evidence to suggest they could fight the unified military assets of the Ctarl-Ctarl. The century-old sea of legends, hushed rumors, and religious dogma that circles the Kei Pirates is not as impressive when considered alongside present state of affairs, reported daily by news media. More than even their past war with Terrans, the Ctarl-Ctarl relish any opportunity to engage in small skirmishes with slightest hints of provocation: Outlaw Companies attempting profitable but dangerous **contraband runs **(which I will elaborate more on later chapters dealing with the Ctarl-Ctarl economy), private military companies fighting corporate wars in independent states too close to their own space, or pirates simply being pirates. Since the pirate navies of the Great Guilds are the most likely rivals to the Space Forces, I'll pay special attention to them.

The Imperial Navy appears to derive great enjoyment in its extensive pirate hunting operations and campaigns, to the point of regularly mobilizing considerable military assets purely for that reason. Practically speaking, there is not a lot of military advantage to this: the **Imperial Border Navy **and the integrated fortress worlds are more than capable of policing the borders of the Empire and said borders seem far less permeable than those of Terran space. The huge operations launched by the rest of the Imperial Navy, costly and uncharacteristically unorganized above the level of task force, seem waged purely for the sake of **pirate hunting **(_piao piao wei wei chango_), building confidence and experience among military units, and the fact that piracy is illegal, just as it is in Terran space. Were the Ctarl-Ctarl to launch a single, concerted effort involving any substantial portion of the Imperial Navy, they could probably obliterate the whole of the **Guild Pirates **off world, much less any individual **Pirate Clan**. They came very close to doing so, as a secondary objective, during the Terran-Ctarl War. Instead, the Empire engages in hundreds of small skirmishes, obliterating informal pirate squadrons that are relatively easily replaced by the guilds. The same scenario plays out every day, dozens of times: a single Ctarl-Ctarl cruiser will respond to a distress call from a registered merchant vehicle, disengage its Sub-Ether engines dangerously close to a pirate group, and fight them until one side is obliterated. By what accounts we have, the Ctarl-Ctarl never retreat. The pirates typically do, if they can.

_(Figure 15: HIMS _Orta Hone-Hone _charges directly into the Ban Guild Pirate Fortress at Sabo's Fall, 30 LTY outside Heifong, weapons blazing.)_

Why is this of interest to us? As the Ctarl-Ctarl fight these small wars for their amusement, we can formulate some idea of their military strength in practice—factoring in that any actual military conflict would be an organized, concerted effort, not a hodge-podge of impromptu raids waged by glory hunters and bored commanders. Indeed, the Ctarl-Ctarl are doing the Space Forces a great service in inadvertently assisting in our regular **anti-piracy campaigns**. Speaking less cynically, piracy is a moral scourge on the human species, unparalleled among the other spacefaring peoples, and even the Ctarl-Ctarl kill and arrest more Terrans on a daily basis than the great wars during the early Towards Star period, it is difficult to criticize them for endeavoring to do so of their own volition. The Ctarl-Ctarl Navy is the single greatest threat to piracy in Outer Space, even before ourselves, and it is left for the Ctarl-Ctarl themselves to explain the perhaps unnecessary deaths of conscripted men and women who are killed or maimed in provoked fights with pirate forces.

While they appear useless and disorganized from our practical standpoint, in reality, they do probably serve a number of purposes not immediately apparent to us beneficial to the Ctarl-Ctarl themselves. Most obviously, after the inevitable casualties of these pirate wars, the Ctarl-Ctarl have a surefire method of keeping their soldiers and warriors in fighting condition during peacetime, adding to the legend of the **Immortal Ctarl-Ctarl**, which I will address next.


	9. The Immortal Ctarl-Ctarl

**The "Immortal" Ctarl-Ctarl**

A forward explaining the need for this subsection: the legendary "immortal" Ctarl-Ctarl has entered the popular discourse and lexicon since **First Contact **between Terrans and Ctarl-Ctarl. I address it here because it is more a military matter than a purely biological one, even if it does have roots in their biology.

The Ctarl-Ctarl not "immortal" in any literal sense—this should be painfully obvious to any rational thinker. Consider the literal definition, _not mortal_. As we've established with their history, the Ctarl-Ctarl are certainly mortal. Untold trillions of Ctarl-Ctarl have died, naturally and unnaturally, in the past. Ctarl-Ctarl are not even particularly long lived, a major aspect of "immortality" in relation to other humanoid mammals, particularly ourselves.

So what are the "immortal" Ctarl-Ctarl? For a historical example, consider the **Ten Thousand Immortals **of **Ancient Persia **on Terra, an elite military force led by **Herodotus. **This is a better use of the word "immortal" while still being imperfect. "Immortal" was a title granted upon an individual Ctarl-Ctarl going back to antiquity and the pre-Empire period, but now primarily existing within the military, though it occasional appears in hyperbole among athletes and elsewhere. The few Ctarl-Ctarl pirates that we know of were self-proclaimed unofficial "immortals" on the same basis.

To be dubbed "immortal" among the legendarily resilient Ctarl-Ctarl naturally is no small feat. The title is bestowed on certain men and women, typically in early adulthood, for a number of physical feats. It is not a military decoration in the strictest sense, as it is not awarded for long military service, victory in battle, or valorous behavior. On the contrary, it can be awarded for nonmilitary behavior that is sufficiently impressive. Perhaps the best known example Aisha Tachi-Tachi, who was given the title after the Empire's first manned spaceflight, due to its harrowing circumstances: unlike Yuri Gagarin, who parachuted out of his spacecraft, Tachi-Tachi plummeted to the Home with the sort of force that would have literally liquidated a Terran. Having narrowly escaped death, the Captain-Lieutenant spent some time in recovery, upon which she was awarded the title of Immortal and returned to active duty.

Not all _Yohang Ctarl-Ctarl _(lit. "Eternal Ctarl-Ctarl"—translated as "Immortal Ctarl-Ctarl" into English and other languages) are in the armed forces—consider a common non-military source of Immortal Ctarl-Ctarl, the **Imperial Interior Ministry's Fire-Brigadiers**, a somewhat militarized but officially civilian organization. In the last thousand years, a long list of brave firefighters have been dubbed Immortal Ctarl-Ctarl for the pure act of survival in the face of harrowing physical circumstances. Above all, it must be something that, quite logically, should have killed a Ctarl-Ctarl (much less a physically more fragile being, like a Terran, Corbanite, etc.). Within the armed forces, Immortal Ctarl-Ctarl form an elite fraternity; outside of it, the concept as a whole is a standard to which Ctarl-Ctarl, culturally, strive for. In particular, among the highest ranked noble families whom dominate the most decorated portion of the officer corps, there's an expectation that any commander worth his or her salt—the top graduates of the highest military academies, the most distinguished young officers—must be an Immortal Ctarl-Ctarl, though the actual percentage whom are is difficult to ascertain.

To boast of oneself as an Immortal Ctarl-Ctarl is no little thing, and it is rather uncommon within the species—it is much more commonly related in interactions between Ctarl-Ctarl and other species. The reasons are fairly obvious: to this day, the Ctarl-Ctarl can boast physical superiority over any other populous species in known space, and even—arguably—purely artificial species like the biologically-engineered **Saurians**, themselves created by the Space Forces for military purposes. Being the only of their kind, the Immortal Ctarl-Ctarl relish their physical prowess, both directly and vicariously, as unique in the known universe.

Like any similar egotistical boast—the (formerly) _imperious _Lorgans, _industrious _Corbanites, the _affable _Silgrians, the _adventurous _Terrans—this claim also carries a meaningful reflection of deep rooted cultural norms. It's with this in mind that I lean into the next section, Ctarl-Ctarl theology, philosophy and spirituality. The title reflects the Ctarl-Ctarl metaphysical view of the universe being **monistic**, put most simply, that the fundamental character of the entire universe—organic and inorganic, past and future, tangible and intangible (as we Terrans would describe it) is that of unity. Even more than our biology, perhaps this is the greatest difference between the Ctarl-Ctarl and us Terrans, who on the broadest, most metaphysical level, tend to assert the universe is divided between two ultimately irreconcilable realities, most obvious expressed as the **body **and **soul**. To the Ctarl-Ctarl, the body _is _the soul, and vice-versa. It must be, as a matter of logic and understanding. Thus, the most physically perfect Ctarl-Ctarl is approaching physical perfection tantamount to **Godliness**. This is one of the greatest things that an observer must take away from our understanding of the Ctarl-Ctarl, and simultaneously perhaps one of the hardest things for myself and others to wrap our minds around. Deserving of its own section, the nature of Ctarl-Ctarl theism and its distinction from our own will be elaborated in the next.


	10. The Ctarl-Ctarl Metamorphosis

**The Ctarl-Ctarl Metamorphosis**

This might seem like a strange place to refer to the most famed of Ctarl-Ctarl metamorphic capabilities, commonly called the **Beast Form **(_Volo Gara Ctarl_), that it should belong in the earlier chapters on military history or biology. However, rest assured that there is a certain academic elegance in tying this subject to the "Immortal" Ctarl-Ctarl previously alluded to, and in relation to the monist nature of their theology. To sum it up: a few million years of evolution have led to a unique quality of Chromosome 21 in the Ctarl-Ctarl, which allows the entire species an inherent ability to transform, itself based primarily in their muscular and cardiovascular system (alongside their flexible skeletons). It is further tied to a unique part of their nervous system, left over from the earliest of their species and their biological ancestors, which gives them a sort of spatial awareness of the nearest cosmic bodies of sufficient mass—in other words, a terrestrial body's natural satellite. Scientifically, the Ctarl-Ctarl generally accept that this is "sensed" by natural magnets in the brain stem. It appears that the Beast Form is amplified by adrenal secretions brought on by certain stages of the nearest moon—provided the individual has sufficient calories in reserve to drive the energy-draining process to its completion, an actual metamorphosis into a very distant, very large quadruped mammalian ancestor. Even the strongest, or more relevantly, best-fed Ctarl-Ctarl can only maintain this form for a few minutes at most, and will inevitably be left exhausted by the feat. A subsequent performance likely takes days or weeks of recuperation, as adrenaline levels in the body return to normal. Not surprisingly there exists a common, though not scientific, perception that links the metamorphosis with **sexual experience**, though not the actual act of **procreation**. Ironically, the form becomes harder to sustain, or even enter, as a Ctarl-Ctarl enters late adulthood, and is practically always lost after that.

All the same, this is something not every sexually mature young Ctarl-Ctarl is actually able of _executing_, and requires no small amount of conditioning and training from an early age—making it most common among the military families. Imperial biologists still wonder, to this day, where on the evolutionary scale this ability appeared: the Ctarl-Ctarl have precious few examples of their evolutionary relatives in the present, just as apes have gone extinct on Earth, and none of them possess this ability (if they did, they might not be extinct). Beast Form is described as being inherited from the ancestors all Ctarl-Ctarl share. This may literally be correct, in that it was possessed by the earliest members of the Ctarl-Ctarl species, and perhaps their immediate (and extinct) predecessors.

There is little further to say on those particular aspects—the Beast Form, while impressive, was rendered immaterial in warfare probably around the time gunpowder was turned from an abstract distraction to an effective weapon. A far more practical application of this is an "incomplete" metamorphosis, upon which a Ctarl-Ctarl can harden their **epidermis** to the point of shattering a Terran combat knife, or assume even greater physical strength, which is both more easily performed and has obvious military applications, which the Ctarl-Ctarl frequently demonstrated in the last war. An experienced Ctarl-Ctarl officer or soldier, provided they are still in young adulthood, can become so efficient in doing this that they can "toggle" certain aspects of the incomplete metamorphosis at will, like an athletes controlling their own heart rates. There are still high caloric demands for this as well, but the trade-off appears to be worth it: watching a Ctarl-Ctarl soldier charge through automatic gunfire will break morale better than any run-of-the-mill psyche campaign, and is a lot easier to pull off. With that in mind, the philosophical implications of a sentient species with the inherit ability to metamorphose into a radically different being on command are probably a significant component in their monist philosophy.


	11. Ctarl-Ctarl Indigenous Theism

**Ctarl-Ctarl Indigenous Theism and Religion**

On a personal note, it was my intention to call this section "The Ctarl-Ctarl and God" but, was overruled by the United Space Forces General Staff's Subcommittee on Literature. This was largely an artistic choice, an ironic redress of our preconceptions and assumptions on the nature of Ctarl-Ctarl theology as a "fundamentally alien religion", in at least two ways: first, that there are millions of Ctarl-Ctarl who are converts to Terran religious orders and faiths, and second, that the stereotype of the Ctarl-Ctarl as an "alien faith", despite its name, makes the fundamental error of assuming Ctarl-Ctarl religion, while alien, is still structured the same that of ancient Terran faiths, a repeat of the classical **Anthropomorphic Dilemma**. The Ctarl-Ctarl, like all well-organized non-Terrans who possess a credible political and military threat to Terran political orders, are supposed to be dogmatically loyal to their indigenous faith in a matter resembling adherents of the **Abrahamic Religions **of ancient Terra. This is flawed, because it ignores a few million years of unique **evolution **and Ctarl-Ctarl biology.


	12. Theism's Roots in the Empire

**Theism in the Empire**

From the Xenotheology Departments of ancient, lauded universities on Terra to untold hundreds of thousands of famous Ctarl-Ctarl philosophers, there is no shortage of discussion and debate as to the nature of religion in the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire. When simplified into a useful form for the Space Forces, it has two major tenants, that I will address directly: ideological origins, and present cultural relativity.

First—it must be understood that, no matter how similar they may appear physically, psychologically, or ideologically, Ctarl-Ctarl are not Terrans. They did not evolve on Terra over thousands of years, and even the uncanny genetic similarities they hold today, reflected earlier on my sections address Ctarl-Ctarl biology, they are fundamentally not humans. One major difference is reflected in Ctarl-Ctarl theism: in the words of the ancient Terran scientific thinker and philosopher, **Richard Dawkins**, Terrans are inherently **dualists**. They were thousands of years ago, going back through recorded history, and even the Forward Star period, a comparatively small portion of Terran history, still possess a tendency to dualism. Ctarl-Ctarl are now, and have been throughout recorded history, **monists**.

What does this mean? Grossly oversimplified, a dualist believes in a fundamental distinction between matter and mind, that an organism, say, a Terran, is not _fully _defined by physical existence. Most relevantly, the conscious mind is a sort of disembodied **spirit **that inhabits the body and, conceivably, could exist separate of a physical form. By comparison, a monistsubscribes to the metaphysical view that things that exist are reducible to a single substance or reality, and this is reflected throughout the universe, but perhaps most relevantly, in the organism itself, say, an individual Ctarl-Ctarl. In dualism, there is an innate, even instinctual tendency, to personify inanimate objects. Dualism is built into our brains, the reflection—according to academia anyway—of a useful tendency that assisted survival.

Rather than dragging on the extremely popularity of this idea through our history, consider the obvious: even today, Terrans across religious and cultural lines tend to distinguish between the physical form and the conscious one. Why is this? For the sake of this text, we subscribe to the so-called **Moth to the Flame Hypothesis**: the behavior of a moth is defined by millions of year of evolution, but why would such an organism engage in the self-destructive behavior of flying into a flame? In actuality, we are asking an incorrect question, just as we incorrectly define Ctarl-Ctarl faith. Moths, and many insects, have benefitted from navigation based on moon and starlight. Being at optical infinity, distant light travels in parallel, allowing for a useful form of navigation, particularly for an organism with compound eyes like moths, which can navigate by maintain a source of light at a particular angle versus the horizon. By comparison, candlelight or any other small, portable light is a relatively recent phenomenon and a minority at that: for each moth that commits suicide, untold numbers successfully carry on their lives, as demonstrated by the continued existence of moths. Candlelight rays, however, do not travel in parallel but diverge from a common source, causing a moth obeying instinct to travel in a logarithmic spiral to its eventual demise. What does this have to do with dualism? Dualism has likely had a plethora of useful traits to early Terrans, who more than any other species on ancient Earth, depended on transmission of useful knowledge to their offspring for survival. Such a mindset was beneficial to early hominid survival, and was thus carried on though most, if not all, of our evolutionary history. Among other things, dualism conditioned children to be receptive to unquestioning wisdom, particularly from their elders. Following this notion, a consequence of dualist thought is the particularly spiritual nature of Terran religion. Nor is this limited to Terrans: a similar dualist hypothesis is postulated, and widely accepted, for Silgrians, and conveniently, Siligranian faiths much more closely resemble our present religions than those of the Ctarl-Ctarl.

Returning to the point: what does monism mean for the Ctarl-Ctarl? _Why _Ctarl-Ctarl are monists is not evident: a popular indigenous theory, based on the simple **common sense **approach popular in the Ctarl-Ctarl intellectual tradition, points to the early Ctarl-Ctarl dominance of their own environment on their evolutionary homeworld. Ninety-nine percent of their history has seen the Ctarl-Ctarl as the most capable, and dangerous, organism in their environment. For an early Terran, the ability to engrain discipline in children, or from a different approach, easily associate certain evidence to certain threats ("Regardless of actual reasons behind it, this tiger is dangerous in essence and will kill me.") is useful, but not a universal constant. As already mentioned, Ctarl-Ctarl imperatives for loyalty and discipline are fundamentally different, and ancient Ctarl-Ctarl had certain luxuries not available to humans when it came to survival in their environment ("I am aware that this tiger, or any other wild creature, cannot seriously harm me, thus the absolutely minimum of information about it does not necessarily need to pertain to its survival. For example, how does it taste?"). Terrans did not become **apex predators** until comparatively recently in their existence, since about the time the early hunter-gatherers mastered the more advanced use of weapons and tools. Ctarl-Ctarl were apex predators since before their learned to use tools.

_(Figure 16: A school textbook illustration of an ancient Ctarl-Ctarl woman. Despite intending to represent the earliest Ctarl-Ctarl, living just under 200,000 years ago, she uncannily like a modern Ctarl-Ctarl in incomplete metamorphosis. Notice her physical build: comparatively short, long legs, large breasts and wide hips, intended to represent both an active hunter and a mother having recently had a litter. As a dangerous predator, she has little need for a spear or weapon of that sort.)_

Again attempting to return to the point: Terrans, on the most basic level, are dualists—the core essence of a sentient organism, a **soul**, is separate from the **physical form**. Ctarl-Ctarl, most basically, are monists—the core essence of a sentient organism _is _the physical form. And if you can say Terrans are obsessed with matters of the soul, it is possible to infer a Ctarl-Ctarl obsession with the physical form; it is very convenient to point consider the perspective from a Ctarl-Ctarl, endowed with physical supremacy over much of the rest of biology the way Terrans consider themselves intellectual superior to the rest of life through much of history, and understand their appreciate of the physical form as a the apex of perfection, or something close to it, the way the Terran soul—the cornerstone of beauty, philosophy, art, strategic, intellectual feats and all Terran creation—is the apex of what it is to be Terran. The Ctarl-Ctarl have a word for soul (_Shen-shen_), in the sense of awareness or conscious enjoyed by higher organisms like themselves, Terrans, Corbanites, etc., and in ancient times, it did have some supernatural attachment to it. But in Ctarl-Ctarl philosophy and theology, it is secondary to the physical form, to which it is a near homonym (_Sh__é__n-sh__é__n_). It is a reverse of the Terran tradition of valuing the spirit over the body, and in all likelihood, it has cascading effects on the Ctarl-Ctarl so pervasive and incalculable they cannot be fully appreciated.

This is both grossly simplified and highly speculative: as in philosophy, we cannot be totally certain of this understanding. We can, however, point to demonstrations of this difference in history, like a different perception of slavery (ownership of another being) than in Terran history. A popular method of consoling Terran slaves, particularly hereditary chattel slavery that was pervasive in Earth's western hemisphere for centuries, was to emphasize the physical nature of slavery and the promise of a just existence after death. Such a philosophy runs in direct contrast with Ctarl-Ctarl though, and religion. It may not be coincidental that slave revolts among the Ctarl-Ctarl were not only more common, but exceeding more violent.

(_Figure 17: A pair of Ctarl-Ctarl scientists observe the lastest Space Forces mind-machine bio-computer at the Proxima Industrial and Military Trade Show, not far from Earth. More familiar with self-contained bio-organic computers, one observed "This is one strange interface. It won't work if you're not wet?" She was referring to the liquid intermediary critical to conscious transmission in such a system.) _

In common dialog, across cultures and language, the Terran or** Human Spirit **is universally celebrated among the people of Earth who left their cradle for space—our intelligence, our flexibility, our compassion, dogma and piety. Among the Ctarl-Ctarl, their physical form—their infamousand nonliteral **immortality**, the capability of some Ctarl-Ctarl to engage in **metamorphosis** (the so-called **Beast Form**), their unparalleled eyesight and ability to detect vibrations in the subspace ether that are only detectable through instrumentation by other species, and the like. Of course, the average educated Ctarl-Ctarl is probably not more likely to consider philosophy than the average educated Terran, but this does form the basis of Ctarl-Ctarl theology and philosophy.

Of course, we miss the elephant in the room: Terrans can claim Ctarl-Ctarl have souls, as they are apt to, alongside themselves, and that **synthetic life** lacks them. **Androids** can claim they have souls, if they are not recognized as such by the mainstream. Ctarl-Ctarl can claim the soul is indistinguishable from the physical form, and by extension, a nonissue. But as in Dawkin's time, science nor theology have proven in a sufficiently convincing matter that such a thing as a soul exists.


End file.
